Hero VIII Clicking, Crazy stock Voltage and RMA Story

[rickytuk]

Has anyone else noticed this board clicks when boot up or shutting down? Mine also clicks right before Windows stats. It's definitely coming from the motherboard. Also what's with stock vcore of 1.39 on 6700K. I don't trust any of the readings I'm getting from this board. HW monitor and CPUZ will only VID, not Vcore, has anyone else noticed this??

I had to send the first board back as it kept crashing and one of the front USB ports didn't work. I noticed that CPU would sometimes report Vcore and other times only VID which I thought was weird. It turns out the new board is doing the same thing, why??

The replacement board turned up and I noticed a couple of stickers over the sata ports which were not on the first board, the one I sent back. There was some additional stuff in the box so I'm convince the first one I received had already been returned and Asus gave it a quick test and repacked it as new. Both boards have that click sound and both generally will only report VID in HW monitor and CPU Z.

Another strange thing is at stock, on both board my vcore in bios goes as high as 1.39 for 4200mhz. I can get a stable overclock on 4500 using only 1.275.

I'm using the latest BIOS. 6700K. I'm seriously considering sending this one back and going with ASRock of Gigabyte. Can someone reassure me this is all normal.

[Raja]

The click is the audio relay latching to prevent DC thump. Perfectly normal.

[ondersma80]

rickytuk wrote:
Another strange thing is at stock, on both board my vcore in bios goes as high as 1.39 for 4200mhz. I can get a stable overclock on 4500 using only 1.275.

I'm using the latest BIOS. 6700K. I'm seriously considering sending this one back and going with ASRock of Gigabyte. Can someone reassure me this is all normal.

I wouldn't jump to swapping brands just to avoid troubleshooting or "challenges"; each mfg has their own quirks and "challenges". I personally have no issue with ASRock and have found their boards to be of reasonable quality for many years now. After two decades of work-related experience with all brands I learned to prefer ASUS.

That said, 1.39V at stock is not normal. Without load my 6700K defaults to 1.248 and drops to 1.200 under load. Other comparable setups I have observed tend to be in the same ballpark. Every CPU is different but shouldn't be defaulting to 1.39. Clear the motherboard CMOS and see if it changes.

[rickytuk]

Thanks for the replies so far. I feel reassured regarding the clicking sound now.

I should make it clear that on the single occasion when HW monitor would display the Vcore (It normally only shows VID) it showed it spiked at a max of 1.39 at stock voltage. The average seemed to be around 1.28 which still seems high at stock considering these chips are supposed to be more efficient than my old 2600K.

That's another thing. Why do monitoring tools like HW monitor and CPU-Z only show me VID and not Vcore. If I re-boot and play with the settings a bit i.e. increase voltage or change to manual it might display vcore until I reboot again and then it will only show VID. this is the second hero VIII I've used having sent the last one back and both had the same issue.

[NemesisChild]

A perfect example why the Vcore should not be left on auto, it will over volt the CPU under load.

If 4500MHz is stable at 1.275v, then carry it over to adaptive mode and call it a day.

[Praz]

Hello

AIDA64 properly reports all voltages. Swapping boards will not fix a software related issue.

[Xeonnemesis]

The clicking is indeed the relays on the board, perfectly normal.

For monitoring various sensors, I prefer to use HWINFO64, it will display both VID & Vcore, Vcore being the more important focus when overclocking.

For whatever reason, the Auto voltage option seems to stuff a ton of additional voltage to the CPU even on stock clocks. I have a 6700k & a 6600K running on a Hero 8 and Gene 8. In both situations the Auto Vcore is really high at stock clocks. My 6600k for example, when placed in Auto receives around 1.39v on the vcore. I set it to manual and was able to overclock the chip to 4.2ghz at 1.185v. Even for an OC, the additional voltage applied by the "Auto" setting is completely overkill. I may be wrong but I think this is a Z170 platform issue, MSI/GB/ASrock most likely all suffer from the too much Auto voltage.

Xeon

[Mr_Wolf]

The 6?00K factory default turbo Vcore, is not the same in all units of the same cpu model, it depends on cpu "quality".
For example, if you buy two 6700K, you could get one with 1.2V Vcore and the other with 1.4V (or any other Vcore).

[vagelisder]

I would like to ask if anyone knows if ASUS Z170 Deluxe makes also that clicking noise on boot. Thanks!